“Green” Colors: Environmentally Friendly Paints

Painting can always seem like a daunting task. Choosing the right color can be very difficult and you can’t always be sure that the color you do choose will actually turn out looking like what you anticipated. Then there’s the actual process of painting which leaves little room for error as it is hard to rectify mistakes.

Recently, people have begun to consider another factor when deciding to paint. People have started to consider the effects of their paint on the environment and whether or not the paint is eco-friendly. This recent desire to have environmentally safe paints has led to the creation of some paints that are “green” in more ways than one.

Milk Paint

Milk Paint is a company that offers old fashioned, chemical free paints for furniture and for walls. The paint comes as a powder that you sometimes add pigment to, and then you mix with water using a hand drill with a paddle (or you can get a workout and mix it by hand). As the name suggests, Milk Paint is made with milk proteins which are organic and bio-degradable, making Milk Paint and Safe Paint (their product for walls) some of the safest and most environmentally friendly on the market. Depending on how you want to measure the color, more or less water and pigmentation can be mixed to get the proper color.

ECOtrend Collagen Natural Interior Paint

This paint offered by ENVision harkens back to the day before harsh chemicals were the norm in the painting industry. ECOtrend Collagen is water based and uses an interesting product to act as the binding agent, bakers will already know what I’m referencing. Eggshell membranes, in this case, contain collagen which is the main ingredient in ECOtrend’s paint. The company gets the collagen from recovered commercial bakery waste that it recycles into the paint. This greatly reduces the material cost and environmental impact that many paint companies experience.

Devine Color

This Oregon based paint company was developed by one woman with a vision for a unique paint experience. Gretchen Schauffler’s line of paint meets the strictest EPA Volatile Organic Compounds tests and is said to go on “like rich yogurt, with the look of chiffon.” And this is exactly what happens with the paint being able to pick up in your fingers. Devine Color also offers handmade color swatches so you know exactly what the vibrant paint color will look like.

While choosing environmentally safe paints may not be the first thing on the minds of those preparing for a paint project, it has become increasingly important to some. For these people, there are a variety of “green” paints to choose from. Whether or not environmentally safe paints are a concern, everybody hopes they can at least paint evenly, have straight edges, and actually get the color they were expecting.

Greener Ideal is an independent environmental news and lifestyle publication that has been curating content since 2008 to further the green movement. The views expressed by contributing authors are their own and may not reflect those of Greener Ideal.

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Greener Ideal strives to help people live their lives in more sustainable ways by publishing valuable green living tips and commentary on the latest environment news. We want to protect the planet and reduce our collective carbon footprint.